1 Immigrant Selection in the Oecd

The selection of immigrants by skill and education is a central issue in the analysis of immigration. Since highly educated immigrants tend to be more successful in host country labour markets and less of a fiscal cost it is important to know what determines the skill-selectivity of immigration. In this paper we examine the proportions of highly educated among migrants from around 80 source countries who were observed as immigrants in each of 29 OECD countries in 2000/1. We develop a variant of the Roy model to estimate the determinants of educational selectivity by source and destination country. Two key findings emerge. One is that the effects of the skill premium, which is at the core of the Roy model, can be observed only after we take account of poverty constraints operating in source countries. The other is that cultural similarities and physical distance are often more important determinants of the proportion of high educated immigrants from a source country to an OECD destination than wage incentives or policy. Acknowledgements: We appreciate the help of Jean-Christophe Dumont who supplied some of the data used in this paper and also the help of Jonathan Temple and Rob Wells. This paper is part of the CEPR Project on Migration and Mobility of Labour supported by the EU research network on Politics, Economics and Global Governance: the European Dimensions.